Why Is a Group of Crows Called a Murder?

Why is a group of crows called a murder?

A group of crows is called a murder because of medieval English poets, not scientists. The term comes from the fanciful lists of collective nouns that English writers compiled in the 15th century, most famously in the Book of St Albans of 1486, where inventing an evocative name for every gathering of animals was something between a parlour game and a flex. Crows got "murder" because of centuries of folklore linking them to death: they scavenged battlefields and gallows, they turned up wherever something had died, and folk tales claimed they held courts to judge and execute members of their own flock. Scientists, for the record, just call it a flock.

So the honest answer is that a murder of crows is a 500 year old creative writing exercise that stuck. It stuck because it is a perfect name, and because crows have spent every century since doing absolutely nothing to soften their reputation.

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Where the term actually comes from

The 15th century English gentry were extremely into what were called terms of venery, the proper words for groups of animals, originally from hunting culture and then increasingly from writers showing off. The Book of St Albans printed pages of them, and plenty were jokes or judgements dressed up as vocabulary: a parliament of owls, an unkindness of ravens, an exaltation of larks, a murmuration of starlings, a shrewdness of apes. Most of these were never used by anyone who actually worked with animals. They were written to be delightful, and five centuries later they still are, which makes them possibly the most successful content marketing in history.

"Murder" landed on crows because the associations were already there. Crows are carrion eaters, so they gathered at battlefields, plague pits and execution sites, which meant that for most of history, seeing a lot of crows genuinely did mean something had gone terribly wrong nearby. Add the folk belief in crow courts, where a flock supposedly tried and sentenced a wayward member, and the name was sitting right there waiting to be written down.

What do scientists call a group of crows?

A flock. Ornithologists do not use "murder" in any serious context, the same way marine biologists do not describe a shiver of sharks in a journal. The poetic terms survive because people love them, not because science needs them.

Although, in fairness to the poets, crows do gather around their dead. Researchers call these events crow funerals: when a crow dies, others assemble around the body, call loudly, and appear to study the scene. The leading explanation is that they are learning about danger, working out what killed one of their own so they can avoid it. Which means the one piece of crow behaviour that sounds most like the folklore turns out to be real, and to be evidence of intelligence rather than menace.

Crows hold grudges and give gifts

Crows are among the most intelligent animals on the planet, and the research is genuinely unsettling in the best way. In a famous University of Washington study, researchers wore a particular mask while catching and banding crows. The crows scolded and dive bombed anyone wearing that mask for years afterwards, and young crows that had not even hatched at the time of the original offence learned the grudge from their parents and carried it on. Crows have also been documented dropping nuts in front of stopped cars so the traffic cracks them open, and there are well documented cases of crows leaving small gifts, buttons, beads, bits of shiny things, for humans who feed them regularly.

If this face remembering, grudge holding energy sounds familiar, it is because Australia's other famous black and white menace runs the same operating system. We wrote a whole survival guide to magpie swooping season, and the overlap in personality is not a coincidence. Corvids and magpies both remember exactly who you are.

Australian crows are mostly ravens, actually

Here is the twist for local readers: the big black bird making that long, descending wail in most Australian cities is not a crow at all. It is the Australian raven. Australia has five native corvid species, and in Sydney, Melbourne and Canberra the common one is the Australian raven, while the Torresian crow holds the north. They are close cousins and nearly impossible to tell apart on sight, which is why everyone just says crow and moves on with their life.

The collective noun does change though. A group of ravens is an unkindness, or in some lists a conspiracy. So the birds sulking on the powerline outside your window are, in most Australian cities, technically an unkindness of ravens, which frankly suits them even better. But if you call them a murder, every crow, raven and pedant within earshot will know exactly what you mean.

Yes, we made the shirt

We are an independent label in Sydney and a pun this structurally perfect was never going to escape us. The Attempted Murder Tee is the joke in its purest form, one crow short of the full charge, and it has 19 five star reviews from people whose sense of humour we endorse completely. The Attempted Murder Hoodie is one of our overall bestsellers, from $80 AUD, for anyone who wants to commit to the bit through winter.

Like everything we make, both are printed to order in our Artarmon studio on ethically made AS Colour blanks, every order ships with a free art print, sticker and magnet, and we ship worldwide from Sydney with free Australian shipping over $85. With 100 day returns, it is also a very safe gift for the bird person, the true crime person, or the person in your life who is both, and who you should probably keep an eye on.

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The short version

A group of crows is called a murder because 15th century English writers invented poetic collective nouns and crows had a reputation, earned at battlefields and gallows, for showing up where death was. Scientists just say flock, though crows really do hold funerals for their dead, remember individual human faces for years, pass grudges to their children, and occasionally leave gifts for humans they like. In most Australian cities your local "crows" are actually Australian ravens, whose collective noun is an unkindness. And two crows, one short of a murder, is an attempted murder, which is why the shirt exists.

More birds with reputations live in our native bird collection, alongside the rest of our Australiana range.